<DrumBeat: May 14, 2006 The Oil Drum A short-term closure of a theme perhaps, and a song?>

62 comments on Light green is the new black. Or the new definition of environmentalism.

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pianoguy on May 14, 2006 - 1:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
The "unfair implication" isn't bad at all, IMO. Since the 1980s, the right has attempted - with distressing success - to make the term "environmentalist" synonymous with "environmental extremist." So this is a good development from a Lakoffian framing perspective: The idea of "light green" is emphatically mainstream.

Also, my experience is that even lighter green behavior than the Times describes can lead to more serious conservation. After buying a Toyota Prius last year, my wife and I were expecting to bask in the warm glow of pious self-satisfaction; instead, that damn car sat in the driveway like Poe's tell-tale heart, a constant reminder that there was much more we could do to reduce our energy and resource consumption. We're now aiming to cut our household energy consumption in half by 2010 - and it shouldn't be that difficult.

(Of course, regular visits to TOD have also helped convince us that reducing our environmental footprint is not something to put off! ;-)

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oilmanbob on May 14, 2006 - 2:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Confucious said about 2500 years ago that if you want to correct the world you must first correct the nation, and that if you want to correct the nation you must first correct the family and that if you wish to correct the family you must first correct yourself. This is a spiritual truism, Jesus said about the same thing when He suggested that you need to first take the beam from your eye if you want to take the splinter from your neighbors eye. Have a little mercy about late converts to the cause. We should even take people that are just green around the gills, cause the whole world has to change. If they feel that they have to be called light green to avoid saying that they were wrong,let 'em. It isn't going to hurt anybody and lots of people will become green if they feel that changing a rigid point of view has no negative consequences.  
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JolieBlanc on May 14, 2006 - 7:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Just wanted to say 'right on'. To get through this with as much of our art and civilization intact as we can, we'll need to work together. Even small steps help, because they lead to bigger steps, and that's how you start walking the walk.

The more energy devoted to screaming gloom and doom, the more energy is wasted that could be used to do something good. If everyone on TOD got out there and started working in their neighborhoods for square foot gardens at public schools, for example, or lobbying school districts to install solar panels on the roofs of said schools so that they're energy neutral -- heck, I bet you could even find some big corporations who'd be pleased to sponsor $20k in solar panels for a school, just for the tax write-off and the photo op with some cute kids.

The first step to adapting to a new way of life is changing the way people think. That means small steps that get them starting to think about energy, not great big proclamations of doom that make them shove their heads into the sand. (Even if those proclamations are true and accurate.)

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62 comments on Light green is the new black. Or the new definition of environmentalism.

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